Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

extremetech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 419 posts

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#91

Post by ferrari8608 »

ianlevesque wrote: post #79
drey08 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could actually be a novel technique against ad blocking. Make the website dysfunctional if the ads can't be displayed.

Yeah, having an option to pay for the site instead would just be crazy.

Having to pay to visit all of the sites out there which are currently using ads would pretty much ruin the internet for most people. Having a big banner at the top asking for donations seems to work rather well, though. See gnu.org and wikipedia.org for examples (though Wikipedia's donation campaign this year is a bit excessive IMO).

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#92

Post by gorhill »

MicroBerto wrote: post #20

People aren't using Adblock to conserve resources. They're using it to block ads and most are willing to take a performance hit to do so.

The idea that you have to choose between a blocker or resources has become common unfortunately.

It's unfortunate because this idea being held as a premise by so many users kind of give a free pass to developers to not work harder to improve their code.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#93

Post by noselasd »

0dmethz wrote: post #45

Use AdBlock. Not AdBlock Plus. Remember: ABP = Shit. AB = Good.

Well, ABP has "acceptable ads" turned on by default , but Adblock is pretty much just worse in every way.. Here's a few items from the changelog before they moved to a closed development mode

AdBlock 2.6.11 (2013-10-25): The AdBlock feature which sends a unique user ID to the AdBlock server every day has been extended. The server can now decide that the user should see a survey — this one is being opened in a new tab, immediately, no matter what the user is doing right now.

AdBlock 2.6.14 (2013-11-09): AdBlock won’t just send a unique user ID to its server now, it will also transmit user’s setting determining whether Google Search ads are allowed.

AdBlock 2.6.29 (2014-04-28): The “AdBlock custom filters” (AdBlock-specific filter list that is installed by default and listed as recommended) add a set of filters to whitelist Mixpanel tracking on the AdBlock website.

AdBlock 2.7 (2014-06-06): Also, AdBlock will tell getadblock.com whether AdBlock has just been installed or has been used for a while

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#94

Post by narfz »

anon4 wrote: post #90

I see nobody has posted it, so here is a very lightweight alternative - it redirects all known ad-hosting sites to 127.0.0.1 http://someonewhocares.org/hosts

i use the same approach. (https://twitter.com/beanieboi/status/546398095182163968)

it's not as elegant as hiding the HTML elements, you see some question marks on the page if safari couldn't load the resource. but overall i'm pretty pleased and it gets the job done.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#96

Post by vosper »

gorhill wrote: post #83
kyriakos wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried µBlock but it seems to be extremely trigger happy. For example Youtube front page doesn't show any videos and Facebook doesn't load at all (basically it blocks everything other than its side bar). I can obviously white list those sites but my concern is that next time I visit some site for the first time I will not know if its broken or just µBlock acting up. ----- EDIT I reinstalled the plugin and the proble…

> Youtube front page doesn't show any videos I see videos all fine on Youtube front-page, using out-of-the-box filter lists. That kind of issue was never reported for uBlock. I would need to know exactly what filter lists you were using, including custom filters. uBlock relies on 3rd-party filter lists to do the job, specifically, out of the box: - EasyList - EasyPrivacy - Fanboy's Social Blocking List - Peter Lowe's…

I haven't tried ublock yet, is it obvious how to work back from a broken page to figure out which blacklists need adjusting?

I'd also recommend that the defaults should have YouTube and Facebook (at least) working out of the box. Otherwise I think people will just uninstall the plugin, rather than trying to figure out how to fix it, which would be a shame.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#97

Post by nkantar »

bnr wrote: post #81
neals wrote: post #14

I used to not do Adblock, because you know, ads make the internet go round and all that. But with the "download here"-button ads, there is no way to know what button to press anymore. Now installing Adblock is a requirement.

I'd love an adblocker with a blacklist instead of whitelist so I could keep the ads on for the long tail of my browsing and remove them only on sites that go overboard.

Could you somehow whitelist all domains and go from there?

Not on a computer right now to try it out for myself, but it sounds like an interesting approach.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#98

Post by aroch »

atoponce wrote: post #78
snird wrote: post #60

I'm using Ghostery as a privacy and ad-blocking extension. Does anyone have data on the impact Ghostery might have on the browser memory usage?

I don't have data on Ghostery memory/CPU usage, but I would offer this warning: Ghostery is proprietary software, and is "calling home" on your usage when you enable Ghostrank. Ghostrank is used to build profiles on who is blocking what, and when, so they can sell this data to advertisers and trackers. Which just seems hypocritical to me. To be fair, Ghostrank is disabled, and opt-in by default. Instead, I think you…

It is not "calling home" if you enable the collection... Privacy Badger isn't nearly as effective as Ghostery.

Regarding Ghostrank -- isn't it better that ad companies learn to create non-intrusive, acceptable ads so that we don't have to rely on adblockers everywhere and can actually give sites their ad-revenue?

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#99

Post by userbinator »

The Proxomitron (local filtering proxy) + HOSTS file + Javascript whitelisting is all I need.

Turning off JS instantly removes a ton of annoyances, effectively removes a huge attack area for browser exploits (I've accidentally infected others by sending them links to sites that had no effect on me...), and while there are certainly sites that require it (often not even of the "application" type, but just to do something that could've been done without), the majority of the ones I come across in e.g. searching for info don't need it. If a site I find when searching refuses to show anything, then I'll just go back and continue with the next search result or use Google's text-only cache which often does have the content I'm looking for in a more readable format. The whitelist is reserved for sites that are both highly trusted and absolutely necessary to enable JS on.

Re: Adblock Plus is probably the reason Firefox and Chrome are such memory hogs

#100

Post by WorldWideWayne »

yourad_io wrote: post #77
WorldWideWayne wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though chromium is open it won't be good for the ecosystem. You didn't mention how or why. Personally, I hope Mozilla goes away and some other group comes along to fill the void because I don't think Mozilla consists of the right group of people to make anything worth using. I'm not using any Mozilla browser until they learn how to respect the native operating system UI guidelines. Instead they're trying to bu…

> learn how to respect the native operating system UI guidelines Your comment is almost worthwhile just for the irony in this. Tabbed browsing basically hijacks window management away from the OS. Tabs are always implemented customly in-app (UI break) - and break the UX of window finding, switching, etc. (doubly annoying in a tiling WM, btw). That's all browsers. > Personally, I hope Mozilla goes away and some other…

Tabs are fine and I didn't even mention them. MDI (multiple document interface) have been around forever and no...they do not take window management away from the OS because tabs are not windows until you want them to be, at which point the OS takes over.

Mozilla's problem has more to do with the fact that by using non-standard chrome around their HTML engine, they cause many little breakages like improper keyboard acceleration.

> Yeah, they're just squatting on that cyberspace and not letting other people through. Plus, FF is bundled/pre-installed everywhere nowadays...blah.

It's really easy to make a point when you create an really flammable straw-man to represent the other side isn't it?

In any case, it's certainly a better to just make up reasons why you could possibly disagree than trying to understand the actual point of view.

Post reply on HN